“Well, mother.” Then, after a moment,
she said, with a rush: “Did you think I
was going to let him suppose we were piqued at his
not coming? Did you suppose I was going to let
him patronize us, or think that we were in the least
dependent on his favor or friendship?”

Her mother did not attempt to answer her. She
merely said, “I shouldn’t think he would
come any more.”

“Well, we have got on so far without him; perhaps
we can live through the rest of the winter.”

“I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
He was quite stupefied. I could see that he didn’t
know what to make of you.”

“He’s not required to make anything of
me,” said Alma.

“Do you think he really believed you had forgotten
all those things?”

“Impossible to say, mamma.”

“Well, I don’t think it was quite right,
Alma.”

“I’ll leave him to you the next time.
Miss Woodburn said you were freezing him to death
when I came down.”

“That was quite different. But, there won’t
be any next time, I’m afraid,” sighed
Mrs. Leighton.

Beaton went home feeling sure there would not.
He tried to read when he got to his room; but Alma’s
looks, tones, gestures, whirred through and through
the woof of the story like shuttles; he could not keep
them out, and he fell asleep at last, not because
he forgot them, but because he forgave them.
He was able to say to himself that he had been justly
cut off from kindness which he knew how to value in
losing it. He did not expect ever to right himself
in Alma’s esteem, but he hoped some day to let
her know that he had understood. It seemed to
him that it would be a good thing if she should find
it out after his death. He imagined her being
touched by it under those circumstances.

VI.

In the morning it seemed to Beaton that he had done
himself injustice. When he uncovered his Judas
and looked at it, he could not believe that the man
who was capable of such work deserved the punishment
Miss Leighton had inflicted upon him. He still
forgave her, but in the presence of a thing like that
he could not help respecting himself; he believed
that if she could see it she would be sorry that she
had cut herself off from his acquaintance. He
carried this strain of conviction all through his
syndicate letter, which he now took out of his desk
and finished, with an increasing security of his opinions
and a mounting severity in his judgments. He
retaliated upon the general condition of art among
us the pangs of wounded vanity, which Alma had made
him feel, and he folded up his manuscript and put
it in his pocket, almost healed of his humiliation.
He had been able to escape from its sting so entirely
while he was writing that the notion of making his
life more and more literary commended itself to him.
As it was now evident that the future was to be one